Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 21 - Chapitre 30

Trust didn’t crack quietly. It shattered, loud and messy, and by midday the entire compound had turned into something Sloane barely recognized, pack members eyeing each other with open suspicion, old friendships suddenly strained under the weight of a single question nobody wanted to ask out loud: who else might be working against us.She found the sharpest edge of it near the infirmary, where a young wolf named Petra was being shouted at by two older pack members, voices raised enough to draw a small crowd.“He’s been asking too many questions,” one of the men snapped. “About patrol schedules. About the wall. Sound familiar?”“I asked because I’m on rotation next week,” Petra shot back, arms crossed defensively, eyes bright with anger and something more fragile underneath it. “I’m allowed to know my own assignment.”“Marcus probably said the same thing to himself before he sold us out.”“That’s enough.” Sloane hadn’t meant to speak, hadn’t planned on inserting herself into pack busin

The ambush came from the ravine, not the wall.Sloane hadn’t been meant to be anywhere near the eastern boundary that afternoon, she’d gone with a small supply team at Griffin’s reluctant approval, a short, low-risk run to a storage cache half a mile past the main gate, escorted by four wolves including Dax. It was supposed to be simple. Nothing had felt simple in weeks, but this, at least, was supposed to come close.The first sign something was wrong was the silence. No birds. No wind through the brush. Dax stopped walking so abruptly that Sloane nearly ran into his back.“Down,” he said, low and urgent, already shifting his weight to shield her without seeming to think about it at all.The attack came a half-second later, three Ravenwood wolves breaking from the ravine’s tree line with a speed that gave the supply team almost no warning. Sloane hit the ground hard as Dax spun, meeting the first attacker mid-lunge with a force that sent them both crashing into the underbrush.She sc

Silas Cross hadn’t slept properly in longer than he could remember.He stood at the window of what had once been his father’s study, looking out over Ravenwood territory in the gray light before dawn, thinner now than it had been even five years ago, half the outbuildings gone dark and empty where families had once lived, the tree line closer to the main house than it should ever have been allowed to grow. Territory shrank when a pack shrank. Nobody had the numbers left to hold the old boundaries anymore.Behind him, the reports from the failed ambush sat unread on his desk. He didn’t need to read them to know what they’d say. Two dead. Marcus’s warning wasted, his decades of quiet loyalty spent on nothing but confirming what Silas already feared, the Marlowes were not going to hand his daughter over easily, and every strike against them only cost him wolves he couldn’t afford to lose.His daughter.The words still didn’t sit right in his chest, even after weeks of knowing it, even af

Marcus was found three weeks after he vanished, and it wasn’t the Marlowes who found him.He walked back onto the border himself, alone, hands raised, looking twenty years older than the last time Sloane had heard his name spoken with anything like affection. The patrol who caught him brought him straight to Griffin, and by the time Sloane reached the main hall, he was already kneeling in the same spot where the Ravenwood prisoner had once knelt, blood on his knuckles instead of his face this time, having clearly fought whoever tried to stop him from leaving Ravenwood territory.“I’m not here to beg,” Marcus said, before Griffin could speak. His voice was rough, worn thin. “I came to tell you the truth. All of it. Whatever you decide to do with me after, I’ve made my peace with it.”Griffin’s jaw was tight, old grief and fresh betrayal warring visibly behind his eyes. “Then talk.”Marcus talked. He told them about the debt from thirty years ago, exactly as Cassian had theorized, a lif

She didn’t cry until everyone else had finally gone to sleep.It came without warning, hours after the chamber, after the increased patrols had been set, after Griffin had finished issuing orders in that flat, controlled alpha voice that meant he was holding something back by sheer force of will. Sloane had gone through the motions of normal nodding at reassurances, agreeing to new safety measures, even managing something close to a smile when Dax made a joke to try to ease the tension in the room.Then she was alone in the dark, and it hit her all at once, the fear she’d been holding at arm’s length since Cassian’s hand had shaken her awake finally catching up with the rest of her.She didn’t hear the door open. She only registered Griffin’s presence when he was already crouched in front of her, having found her curled against the wall of the small chamber where she’d apparently been sitting for longer than she’d realized, silent tears finally breaking free now that no one was watchi